NCOP MPs concerned about tight timeframes for budget approval

The Select Committee on Appropriations met yesterday to receive presentations from the Committee support staff on what duties NCOP MPs are expected to carry out over their term, and how the support staff will assist them. MPs were also briefed on the budget cycle, which brought up a few concerns from the support staff.

The Committee Secretary, Lubabalo Nodada, informed the NCOP MPs about the six-week budget cycle and the “very tight” timeframes for processing the budget. Nodada said, “Members will find themselves running around because there is legislation that we need to comply with called the Money Bills [Amendment Procedures and Related Matters] Act. The issue with this legislation, because we need to comply with it - it is impossible to observe the six-week [budget] cycle… which is a rule of the NCOP. This time around we suspend the rule and comply with the legislation.”

The challenge with the legislation was that the timeframes for processing the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) was too tight, as only nine days are given to deal with fiscal frameworks and consider the division of revenue.

“When we deal with the Division of Revenue Amendment Bill there must be negotiating mandates, there must be final mandates. But all those documents must be submitted within about five days. And, the provinces have asked, what about public participation? Then public participation is suspended and provinces become mad. In a way they interpret it as though Parliament is imposing on them, because, remember – they have their own programmes,” said Nodada.

NCOP Liaison Officer for the Free State Legislature, Marette Basson, spoke on behalf of all the provincial liaison officers, echoing the Committee Secretary’s concerns about the disregard for public participation. She added that the Committee programme for the consideration of section 76 legislation is never cast in stone.

“There are always changes happening at short notice, which creates problems for the provinces, especially smaller provinces. Members sit on more than one committee, and these committees are clustered so you cannot change a committee meeting to suit the NCOP – it is not always possible in some of the legislatures. Also, with short notice, public participation is not effective, especially with rural provinces, you are forced to concentrate public hearings in one area and it is usually an urban area,” said Basson.

The DA’s Eugene Von Brandis sympathised with the liaison officers saying that there were a few obstacles in the provincial legislatures that Members did not know about. He said that public participation took time and money and “it is not authorised with one signature, it has to go through a whole process to get approved. Then you have to take time for people to respond. Maybe it is such an important bill that you have to go to four or five areas in your specific provinces.”

He added that talk about a six-week budget cycle was “nonsense and there is no way we can try to accommodate it… there are only certain days [allocated] to meetings, so if you miss a day, it has to stand over for an entire week… I don’t know if the Committees knew how much pressure the legislatures were under. It was crazy outside”.

The ANC’s Charel De Beer, said he understood the pressure, but it was the MPL’s duty to link up with his legislature after meetings and then inform the liaison officers about what happened.

Committee content adviser, Mongana Tau, informed the Committee that the NCOP “is all about cooperative governance and good intergovernmental relations”. However, there were challenges. When the spheres of government, particularly local government, under spends on their budget or asks for rollovers, “it means that a service is being postponed… it compromises service delivery,” says Tau.

According to Tau, negative audit opinions indicate there are weaknesses within an institution and “compromises service delivery and public perception… issues of corruption can be assumed even if there is no corruption. During the Fourth Parliament, there were instances of intervention from government … during this period there were 37 interventions”.

Other challenges include weak intergovernmental relations, capacity constraints in all spheres of government, and structural challenges within local government – all factors that compromise planning and service delivery.